


Lot's Wife

by placentalmammal



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 10:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal/pseuds/placentalmammal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lapsed Catholic and an albino walk onto a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lot's Wife

The plume of black smoke was more clearly visible from the barracks roof. It was thirty miles to Nipton, but the pissant town was upwind from the Mojave Outpost, and Margaret thought she could smell traces of ash on the breeze.

It was a familiar smell, one ingrained deep in her unconsciousness. Her earliest memory was of solemnity and black cloths draped over the altar, smoke in the censer and a cross on her forehead. She remembered standing in line and the preist stooping to look her in the eye, and a reminder that she, too, would die. It was a strange and overwhelming message for a child, and she cried during the walk back to their family pew. Her mother frowned at her, embarrassed by the tears, but Father had used the anecdote in his homily the next week.

She was a child, and already awed by His power. The adults could take a lesson from her, he said. The Kingdom of Heaven belonged to the children, to those who humbled themselves before the Lord. Amen.

The association was an unpleasant one, one that she'd been running from for years. Time and distance couldn't shake the unworthiness that had been haunting her since childhood. The smell of smoke on the wind, and she was a child again, small and insignificant in the eyes of the Lord. She was a sinner.

Margaret had tried to bury the ritual and mystery of the Church when she was a teenager, but pieces of it kept resurfacing in her mind. It was the little things that brought her back: a bottle of cheap wine, the sight of a rosary around the neck of a trader, the scent of smoke on the wind.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

As it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.

Just words, words that had buried themselves in her psyche, a splinter in her mind, too swollen to see clearly, and too painful to remove. She’d tried, and that had only inflamed the injury and spread the infection. She had to treat it as she would a physical injury: something to bind it up, something to ease to the pain, and time would take care of the rest. The fever would run its course and the sickness would pass.

It was thirty miles to Nipton and thirty miles back. A day, maybe two, of walking, all for a handful of caps and the gratitude of a woman who didn’t think much of her. But something in her wouldn’t let the matter rest. It might have been the last traces of a childhood belief system; it might have been her own ingrained morals, nebulous and independent of the Church; it might have been simple human curiosity.

Margaret spat a stream of tobacco juice through her teeth. “I’ll be back tomorrow, before dark.”

The sniper inclined her head. “Don’t do anything stupid. Nipton’s a pit. It’s not worth getting killed over.”

“Probably not.”

“Careful on the ramp on the way down.”

Margaret nodded and set out towards Nipton, and she did not look back, she did not stop, and she was not swept away.


End file.
